Elhandra's Story
by JoeyStar
Summary: Elhandra reflects on her feelings for Gippal, her resentment of Rikku and her complicated relationship with Lreav. One-shot. Follows "Rikku's Story" and "Our Story".


**Disclaimer:** As usual, nothing belongs to me. I'm just borrowing.

**A/N: **This one-shot's been languishing, incomplete, on my hard drive for over year. I finally gave it the attention it deserves and here's the result.

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**Elhandra's Story**

By: JoeyStar

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I think, in some ways, I'll always be in love with him. Even now, after everything that's happened. It's almost funny if you think about it too much. My world's falling apart around me, and all I can focus on is the fact that the guy I'm in love with is lusting after somebody else.

It's all so … juvenile.

But the problem is, I can't stop it. I've tried, Spira knows I've tried. For my own sanity's sake. Because, you know, the last year's been hard enough without adding my own twisted emotions into the bargain. It seems that everywhere I turned, there they were. Smiling, happy, _together_. Djose Temple was a nightmare; I couldn't get out of there fast enough. They were so … obnoxious. So completely unaware of anything but their own relationship. Lreav had only just – and they were worried about _living_ arrangements. It made me sick. I was glad to leave.

I never liked her. From that first day, something about her just made me want to scream. Maybe it was Gippal's constant damn comments. He thought he was being so subtle, but it was obvious to a blind, dumb blob that he liked her. And she was so cute and perky and _happy_ – who wouldn't like her? Princess Rikku. The girl who'd helped to save the world at fifteen. Who'd done it again two years later. The Al Bhed darling. Cid's precious little girl.

It made me want to vomit.

How is it that some people can appear so special, while others fade into obscurity? Why are some given the chance to embrace fame and opportunity, while others have no choice but to live the lives that are handed to them? I wonder if I would have made the same choices in her situation. Would I have been better or worse than Rikku at saving the world?

I'll never understand what's so special about her. She's just … a girl. A little kid, playing at being a grownup. And yet she gets everything handed to her on a plate. She never has to try, or fight or struggle. Life comes so easily to her._ Guys_ come so easily to her. The two most important men in my life and both of them fell in love with her. There's something horribly ironic about that.

Lreav. Spira, just even _thinking_ about him hurts, like this dull ache down in my bones that I just can't get rid off. We were never close, me and my little brother. Too many years between us. Too little in common. He was so intense, so quiet and I was … too busy with my own life to have any time for the strange little boy who'd suddenly appeared in it.

I was sixteen when the cracks in our parents' relationship finally grew too great; when Lreav's mom met Gippal's dad and realised that falling in love again at her age was still possible. Lreav was nine; old enough to experience the fallout, but too young to understand the politics behind why his mother was leaving. All he knew was that she'd found another family to live with while he was forced to remain with a distracted father and an absent half-sister.

I don't know when he and Gippal met for the first time, but I remember Lreav's reaction. He became fixated with the idea that Gippal's dad was responsible for the breakdown in his parents' relationship and that animosity quickly transferred itself from father to son. Over the years it grew, becoming an obsession that drove him all the way to the Machine Faction and that day at Kilika Temple. All it would have taken was a minute of my time to set him straight, to tell him that his parents marriage had been failing long before Gippal's dad arrived on the scene, and all of that could have been avoided. But I didn't bother. Looking back, I'm not even sure I noticed.

I'm not the only one who made mistakes, mind. Our parents were certainly responsible for enough. Even Gippal – when we worked for the Machine Faction, there was never any hint that his relationship with his step-brother was anything other than strictly professional. And Princess Rikku … well, don't even get me started. They way she treated him – she reduced my brother to nothing more than a simpering, love-struck shadow and then punished him with her indifference. Sometimes it all builds up inside and me and I just want to – to hurt her, like she hurt him. To scream at her. To pull at her perfectly styled hair until it's hanging in tatters around her face. Why couldn't she see what she was doing to him? Why didn't she stop? Why didn't she keep her filthy hands off what was already mine?

I want to blame her for Lreav. I really do. I _need _to blame her, because if it's not Rikku's fault, then who's it is? Gippal's? Mine? Lreav's himself? Who should have pulled him back from that precipice?

The truth is, I don't know. Maybe all of us. Maybe Lreav. Maybe it's time to let this go. But somehow I can't. It's always there, gnawing away at me, like a splinter stuck in the palm of my hand. I thought distance would help. Seems I was wrong.

They've been on the news a lot recently. In the wake of the political storm my brother stirred up, they've become the poster children for the Al Bhed, trotted out on a regular basis to prove to the world that not all of our people want to blow Spira to pieces. She flashes her ridiculously toothy grin and giggles irritatingly, he jokes around and looks vaguely embarrassed and hey – everything's all right again. The dark knight is dead, the hero has won his girl and the world is saved.

I guess that leaves me as the evil step-sister.

A fitting end to my story, I suppose.


End file.
